Takenaka Garden Afforestation Inc./Ecology Garden

Eco-plants were actually a discovery of a research group at NASA

After the successful Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) began planning for a station on the Moon.

The big problem then was to develop life-support systems for a fully enclosed space. It was going to need an Earth-like environment to build the station. The first question the researchers had to answer was: How does the Earth create clean air, and then keep it clean? They reached the conclusion that it was plants through a live cleansing process.

Extraordinary results from the NASA BioHome

The team of researchers led by Dr Wolverton created the BioHome, a completely self-contained facility, and identified 300 different volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) emitted by synthetic materials. The team set up experiments in the laboratory growing leafy plants under weak light, with contaminants at a level that would be dangerous in a spaceship. As a result, we found that the VOCs scattered through the air quickly diminished.
The team showed that the plants didn’t only absorb the toxic gases, but had a cleansing effect as well.

Eco-plants found by NASA to have a strong cleansing capacity

What’s the secret of this cleansing of the air? The many pores in the leaves of plants. They absorb and clean up the toxic gases from the air. We also know that the microorganisms that coexist with the plants’ roots also act to absorb gases.
The NASA research team studied this for many years before publishing their findings in 1984. The team identified certain plants with a particularly high ability to cleans the air, and called them ‘eco-plants’

Eco-plants make hospital air even cleaner

Through their activities, the microorganisms in plants around their roots create the ecosystem that sustains life on Earth.

As the diagram shows, the basic functioning of plants keeps the air clean.
Of all plants, Eco-plants control clean air through phytochemicals and the transpiration effect, producing the ideal environment for humans through the forces of Nature. The results of experiments by the Tokyo University of Agriculture also show that indoor plants significantly affect the flicker value, an indicator of levels of activity in the cerebral cortex and on visual fatigue. The experiments found a 60% recovery from fatigue and a 15% improvement in endurance.